Prize Winner, American Art Awards 2020. Category: 3rd place Art Brut.
This piece began as a "brush cleaner"; that is a panel set to one side in my studio used to smear the leftover paints after a day of painting. The organic development took shape over many months with faces and limbs bursting from the tormented form. The chimerical beast wasn't born but fought its way into existence. It is all at once a monster, a victim, a conquerer, a slave and a king. An expression of human latent potential bursting forth erratically, without direction; stamping down the lost faces of the past. A manifestation of a mind resetting itself after the collapse of old ideologies.
Reverse (2023): A diptych of two stoic monarchs with eyes closed in resigned peace. One wears a crown placed upon his head while the other a crown which must have burst painfully from her head. Are they the stone faces that the beast has crushed in its rage? No really, I'm asking.
